Tim
Greetings! Have been reading in your blog and would love to contribute. I grew up in the church from age 4-17 and would like for you to post this message to share with other survivors/victims.
Wow, until I came across this site, I thought my brother and I were the only ones from our generation who had voluntarily left and not gone back! My parents divorced when I was 4, when my mother joined the church. That was in 1972. My mother, my brother and I attended in Greely, Colorado until the age of ten when we moved to Jackson, Wyoming and experienced those 2-3 hour rides to church in Idaho. Moved back to Colorado 2 years later and finished my tour with the church in the Ft. Collins congregation.
Reading through others’ posts brings back so many memories that I haven’t thought of in years… Y.O.U., Day of Atonement, going around to all my teachers in Jr. High with a paper for them to sign so that I could take a week off school to go to the feast and not get held back for having too many absences. Each teacher would make me explain why we were going, what is the feast, and what made it so much more important than school. Then, lets go through it all again for each and every holy day. Next year lets repeat this again. Same teachers? “Explain to me one more time why your church is more important than school?!”
I remember one summer our minister thought that our Y.O.U. group could use a little more discipline. So on Sundays we would all caravan to the local park and spend a couple hours doing marching drills. Later in my life I joined the army and I remember thinking “hell, I’ve done all this before.” This crazy marching shit went on for a couple months as I recall. Who else but WCG could come up with something like that?
Y.O.U., Bittersweet memories there. Of course there were good times because I could hang with my buddies for a day or two. Through the week I was a loner, as I’m sure many of you were. (Have to keep ourselves separated from the “people of the world” Sounds like Children of the Corn doesn’t it!) We would go on those weekend trips to Wyoming or Nebraska to play basketball tournaments. It was fun, but there’d always be something that we would pay hell for. Couldn’t have a girlfriend through the week so on these weekends trips someone would always get caught making out with there church girlfriend and we’d all get locked down for it. Or we’d sneak off and have a cigarette and someone would smell it. Nothing would happen until we got back to the home church and then We’d catch hell! I remember one night we were all sleeping in this big room and 4 or five of us were throwing little pieces of cake at each other. An innocent teenage thing, cake, for chrissake. We got a special sermon the next week, meetings between the minister and all our parents and suspension from all YOU activities for a while. You can’t have any kind of normal life with friends through the week and now we’re going to take away all you social interaction on the weekends because you and your buddy tossed a freakin’ piece of cake at each other!
Our minister lived on the hill overlooking our house. I swear he would watch me and try to catch me doing something wrong. My mom would get regular reports from him informing her of all my real or imagined infractions while she was gone. If I went outside and sat on the porch he would call her that night and tell her I was waiting for someone to pick me up so I could go out in the world and do something evil. God, I hated that gestapo S.O.B.
I’m rambling now. I could go on forever about all the weird things we all shared… Annointings with oil, (yeah, that’ll help that broken bone) Have you ever met one single “normal” person who knows what a matzo is? Yeah, I saw the telecast, in the Ozarks I believe. I seem to recall that the big man himself even graced us with a personal appearance in Denver one time on an ordinary sabbath. How lucky and blessed we were.
The Place of Safety… only kid in my school who knew where Petra was! Let’s go over that one again… When we get the phone call from the deacon we will get in the car and drive to the airport with only the clothes on our backs and get on a plane for the middle east. But Mom, we ‘re poor and occasionally receive 3rd tithe assistance, how will we pay for the tickets? Think maybe we should go ahead and apply for passports now? Can we get Jordanian visas on 15 minutes notice? World war 3, jews to the left, arabs to the right, and I’m stuck in the middle with a bunch of whole wheat and honey loving, spanking giving weirdos. Place of safety, my ass!
Anyways, I turned 17 and said no more. moved out and quit the church Deep down I knew it was all bullshit, but the weird thing is, I was actually scared for a year or so. It took a while to really shake off all that weight and realize that I was not going to spend eternity in the lake of fire. The thing that disturbs me though is that a lot of my friends left at the same time and my brother and I are the only ones who managed to stay away. They have all gone back, some sooner, some later. It just goes to show what a hold the WCG had over our lives. My mom never went with any of the splinter groups. now she mostly spends her sabbaths by herself up in the mountains getting close to her god in her own way and meets with small groups for the feast and holy days. Has mellowed considerably with age.
I am a card carrying atheist. Not out of bitterness or spite, just simply because I can think rationally and I see no evidence of any gods and I see no reason to imagine any. One of the greatest moments in my life was when I realized that nature around us is all there is and that I don’t have to live in fear, ’cause nothing’s going to happen. I’m happily married for five years now to a wonderful woman who never even heard of WCG! It was nice to find this site and read all your stories. The past is gone and I hold no ill feelings anymore, but it’s good to read your stories just to know that there are some others out there who understand what it was like to grow up in that madness. We’re strangers with a special bond that we share.
Thanks for letting me share just a few rambling, disconnected thoughts.
Tim
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August 19th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
When I read your life at Worldwide I felt as if I were right there with you!!! I spent the first 19 years of my life there and still get the chills when I think about all the weird crap we had to do!!! LOL. I’m glad I can look back and laugh on it now=0. Take care.
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Yeah, there was some really weird stuff! Did you ever attend one of those dances where an elder would walk around placing a stick between the dancing teenagers to make sure there was nothing besides their hands touching each other?
I’ve never told anyone this ’till now- You know how you’d get the little yellow envelopes in the mail to use to give your “offerings” on the holy days? When I was 14 or 15 I started filling out the envelope, but I’d leave the money out. (figured I needed it more than they did, worked damn hard for it too!) Istarted doing that at the feast also with my 1st tithe money. Fill out the envelope, but pocket the money. I was nervous as hell wondering when my mom would get a phone call and I’d be busted. What kid should have to go through that crap!?
I’m glad we can both laugh about it now Calli, I’m glad I was strong enough to see it for the crap it was. I was reading the section of this site called “you know you grew up in wcg if…” and I laughed my tail off, so much that we went through was so twisted that you can’t help but laugh now.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Love your post. I laughed hysterically @ “Children of the Corn” and “place of safety, my ass”. Hilarious! But so true.
November 4th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Tim - great post! Brought up a couple of memories:
At S.E.P. Scotland I and several others were called out and reprimanded during a sermon for sending coded messages to one another. The minister bragged that he had cracked the code and dared the note-writer to stand up - and he did. How did the minister know about the coded notes? They were reading our “Sabbath notes” to one another. For those who didn’t go to S.E.P., “Sabbath notes” were little letters sent to your friends at camp, delivered to their dorm on the Sabbath. So what’s worse, writing in code to your friends or reading the private correspondence of hundreds of teenagers? (Note to Arthur Sucking from 1987: paranoid much?)
Also, a few months ago I was listening to NPR and the latest upheavals in the Middle East. Suddenly the image of 144,000 mainly-caucasian Americans strolling to Petra came to mind and I burst out laughing alone in my car. What were we going to do - yell “olly olly oxen free!” or use cloaking devices?
Love the humor in your post. The only “gift” worth keeping from the WCG experience? A twisted sense of humor.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
I feel so sad when I read all of these comments. My heart goes out to all of you who have had such bad experiences with this cult. Good thing for me that my mom was just getting started in this cult when I was a teen. I do know what it feels like to feel so guilty for so much stuff. It seems to be brain washing for sure cause it took me a while to get past some of the stuff I did get taught. I became a Chrisitan when I was pregnent with my first kid. I wasn’t living right and I wanted to get it right cause I was responsible for another life. Long story short, we started having a bible study at our house with a pastor who I waited on at a resturant that I worked at. I learned so much stuff, God was so much different than I ever knew from that stuff. I am happy to say 24 years later I am still a member of a church who beleives in a living,loving, all powerfull God who loves me and is on my team. I have lots of faults and issues but my God is personal and paitent with me and helps me everyday to be the best I can be. I don’t have to worry every day if I have done all the right stuff to be good enough, I am never gonna be good enough, that is why I have Jesus. I have read so many of these blogs trying to understand what my mom is really into these days, she is sooo into this and it is hard for me to see her in such bondage. She lives at an apt at our home and seems to be getting deeper and deeper into this. I need to love her unconditionally and be there for her , but am desperately trying to understand this cult more and more so if the chance comes up I can have a chat with her. She is very stubborn about the whole thing and when we have had a converation, I don’t know what I am talking about. I have asked her to show me verses in the Bible to support her side and I got a response a couple of times and when I respond with alternivtive verses showing a false teaching we are done! We have not had a conversation for a long time. I try not to make this an issue with us, but it is very hard to see her soooo into false teaching. She is on a limited income and now after reading all this stuff about all the tithing 1 2 3 I wonder if she is thithing more than she should. YIKES I think thithing is biblical and I do it but not 3 times over. Thanks for all your comments, this helps me to understand this more and more, I need to so I can be informed if and when we talk about this. I am sad this cult has made so many people turned off to God, I don’t mean some religion, but God himself. It is a great thing, not what
this has turned it into, I challenge people to find out the truth for themselves, I promise it will change your life for the good, I am living proof of that, what they teach and do is NOT what is all about. Thanks for reading this. Find out the truth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
November 14th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Renee,
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, tithing is scriptural. All three tithes are scriptural. Many things are scriptural that various particular sects of Christianity would rather ignore. In fact, the Bible is so contradictory that it requires amazing contortions of common sense and stretched interpretations (or outright ignorance of what the it actually says) to have a livable faith. Even the sects that claim to be “Bible believing” pick and choose.
So don’t really be surprised if you can’t change your Mom’s mind, because the scripture supports both of you.
December 1st, 2007 at 7:03 am
Tim,
I grew up in this “church” and so many of the things you referenced I also experienced.
I sit here now and I am a 39 year old man with tears in my eyes because of memories your statements bring back. No football games, no prom, no friends,no dates, no money. The guilt felt because of doing or wanting to do normal kid/teenage things. I left home at 16 just to have some type of freedom.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:26 am
Good to hear from you Ray. It’s good to hear of another person strong enough to break away from their grip. It’s a shame that so many “kids” were forced during their formulative years to make big life altering decisions. “stay and be victimized, or get free and wrestle with the fear of the lake of fire”
Hell, we ought to round up all the surviving leaders down to the local level and sue them for reparations! I meant that to be humorous, but the sad thing is we’d probably have a good case.
Good to hear from you and take care!
January 4th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Wow Tim,
I couldn’t stop laughing about your empty yellow envelopes. I on the other hand would almost always purposely “forget” mine at home. But most of the time they would have those extra generic envelopes that I believe were a different color to give out if you forgot your own. But then I would just pick up my little brother’s enevelope and pretend like mines was under his. LOL. I couldn’t stand or understand those tithing days. I remember all those baskets going up and down the aisles while someone on stage was either singing or playing some instrument.
And as for the dances!!! OMG. I so remember those days. I remember one year when I went to one of those Y.O.U. camps in Alaska we had many of those yard sticks on the dance floor!!! How funny you mentioned that=0. I dreaded the bible study sessions because I honestly don’t believe any one of us in the room was actually paying attention. I was always doodling on my notebook and occasionally I would jot down a scripture or two and fumble through my bible to make it look like I was listening!!! LOL. I know. It was mean. I can’t help it. I was forced to go to this camp because the Minister at my church said I needed to be closer to God.
Speaking of life altering decisions, Tim!!! One of the highlights of my Minister is when he gave a sermon to us and said that we could all take a long walk down a short pier into the Lake of Fire if we didn’t believe in the Worldwide way!!! How’s that for a traumatizing experience at 16?